Corporate Sustainability at BioSYLx

Corporate Sustainability at BioSYLx

BioSYLx intends to promote sustainability across the entire product value chain by ensuring fair trade with local farmers, promoting health benefits to global consumers and optimizing quality of product selection and processing.

BioSYLx endorses and support the regulation of Fair Trade for all our products and ingredients. We seek to build long term relationships of transparency and respect with local farmers, whom we have known for years, and bear their best interest in mind. We assist and train them in selecting high quality products. We pay equitable prices that encourage sustainable production. We also strive to sustain the viability of Acacia trees.

BioSYLx has its own processing facilities close to the best production areas, and does not blend with products from other regions. Our production facilities usecertified non-GMO, irradiation-free, allergen free, pesticide-free raw materials, to produce Kosher and Halal-certified products. We make complete safety datasheet available to all our customers upon request. We certify that our products are processed following the HACCP Standards and GMP (Good manufacturing practices), requested by the European Union legislation CE 852/2004.

We select our products based on their health benefits to global consumers, backed by clinical trials and peer-reviewed scientific literature. We also develop our own proprietary research on the products we market or intend to market.

Agricultural products are very important among the population for all the beneficial aspects of this economic activity.

BioSYLx and its local affiliates respect international working rights and wants to be a partner for job employment, villages equipment, support to non governmental organization and actions for Fair Trade.

We do not hoard and speculate on the price of our commodities. We buy products because we have identified an industrial user for them. We pay prices that allow our suppliers to make a sustainable profit.

SEDEX

Having taken an initiative to become members of Sedex and its increasingly global network, we are actively aiming towards integrating ethical and responsible practices along our supply chain. Sedex provides us with a platform for sharing ethical supply chain data that in turn allows us to mitigate risks, protect our company’s reputation and improve supply chain practices. The online collaborative platform helps us in sharing and viewing information on labor standards, health and safety, the environment and business ethics with our customers in a cost effective manner. Additionally, upon full implementation of this platform at our organization, we will cut down on the unnecessary paperwork which again is conducive to an eco-friendly business practice.

ECOCERT

Another development in regards to our commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility is the certification by Ecocert for the Organic Gum we supply. This allows us to provide traceability to all stakeholders in the value chain as the ecocert audits involve, for example, the entire production system: inputs, production, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labelling, storage, distribution and import. In addition to this, annual monitoring inspections are carried out, some of which are spot checks, and samples may be taken for laboratory analysis. When it comes to Organic farming, the ecocert certification helps us to maintain our compliance with various organic farming regulations (Article 86 European Commission (EC) regulations 889/2008; NOP § 205.670) in check. Moreover, the routine field testing carried out by Ecocert inspectors enables us to determine the extent to which we comply with organic production method and to assess the effectiveness of the remedial measures that we put in place. Nevertheless, the field test covers many aspects of organic farming and the detrimental contaminants that it is sometimes associated with including; pesticide residues, GMOs, chemical ionisation, prohibited ingredients (additives, processing aids), purity, heavy metals, dioxins, PAHs, mycotoxins, etc.

Our future initiatives will involve getting our entire product line certified by ecocert in order to work our way towards a more eco-friendly business environment, and to adhere to the increasingly stringent regulations governing the industry.

Climate Change

Our future efforts in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility will involve carbon accounting which in turn will allow us to assess our carbon footprint and the impact that it has on issues related to global warming and climate change. The impact is measured by calculating the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions which may be directly or indirectly related to our business activities (produced by us, or our supplier, or our customers) and are traduced in 〖CO〗_2 (Carbon Dioxide) ton equivalent. This would not only allow us to estimate and identify the origins of our climate change impact in order to reduce it, but also have other potentially major implications on our business processes, such as:

Reducing our production costs,

Motivating employees & stakeholders,

Obtaining new market and products,

Valuating our brand and firm,

Forecasting or complying with legislations.

The way we hope to achieve this is by employing the expertise of Ecocert in carbon footprint assessment which is split into several phases:

Awareness-raising in climate & energy stakes,

Collection of GHG information

Financial Forecasting (Savings and development strategies to climate commitment scenarios

Recommendations on short/medium/long term actions for GHG reduction.

Measure

Reduce

Commit

Employee Training

We believe that the training of employees is very critical in achieving a socially responsible work environment and infusing a corporate culture that is conducive to the norms of corporate social responsibility. An on-going professional education and training will be put in place to educate the employees in the following general areas:

Regulation

Food Security

Trace-ability

Management System (Quality, Environment, Safety)

Opportunities for Collaboration

To reduce our overall adverse impact on the environment and our mutual commitment to reduce CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) emissions, minimize energy consumption and build long term sustainable values, we believe that we have several grounds for collaboration.

Firstly, we propose delivery of our products in large bags so to reduce the packaging material and ultimately our environmental footprint. Secondly, we could recollect the bags so that it can be recycled and reused in our warehouses. We strive to use 100% recycled material in our products’ packaging which would be sustainable for the environment and simultaneously it would streamline our operations by reducing the costs associated with packaging.

BioSYLx also aspires to establish a centralized warehousing or directly ship to the end-consumer in a manner that minimizes the distance Gum Arabic travels in order to minimize CO2 emissions. This is something that we would like to study with our customers and assess potential alternatives and its corresponding implications to our social efforts.

Another possible area for collaboration with is Fair Trade that BioSYLx and its subsidiaries are increasingly placing emphasis to. The fair trade certification would essentially provide a market driven incentive mechanism to reward farmers and all other stakeholders in the value chain fairly. The establishment of Fair Trade standards will empower our farmers with market driven leverage to demand fair wages and working conditions. The mechanism provides leverage to the poorest elements of the supply chain which, according to a recent IFAD report, comprises over one million families in the Sub Saharan Sahel. This initiative will promote the sustainability of local agriculture and relationships between growers/producers and processors, whilst meeting the growing demand in Fair Trade of consumers especially in Europe and North America.